Jainism

Author(s): Herbert Warren
Publisher: Divine Knowledge Society

Page 76

JAINISM
RULE 5
Is with regard to the degree in which sense pleasures should be enjoyed and controlled. The man having been for all past time enjoying the pleasures of the senses, cannot give them up at once, and therefore, only some need be given up at first. He may enjoy sense pleasures to a degree commensurate with his business and household duties, and should give up sense pleasures which conflict with those duties. Also he should control those sense pleasures which would encourage or feed any of the following six things, namely:--
(1) Sexual passion, the lustful eye towards any girl or woman not the man's wife.
(2) That emotion by which we in a rash way hurt or injure others in our speech or actions. It may be called anger: there are those two elements in it, rashness and injury.
(3) Greed, whether it be in the form of not relieving a genuine case of distress when we are appealed to or that comes to our notice when we have the means or are able to relieve it. Or whether the greed takes the forni of persuasively getting property from a person in an illegitimate way without any reason. Shop people do this sometimes by inducing purchasers to buy what they don't want.
(4) Pride, in the form of the non-acceptance, through obstinacy, of the teachings of persons who are actively engaged in attaining the state of liberation. We think, “I know just as well as he does”; and the teaching is re
jected without examination.